Year: 2017 (Page 2 of 3)

As part of my ongoing research into the Edward Snowden documents, I have added an additional document to the Canadian SIGINT Summaries. The Summaries include downloadable copies of leaked Communications Security Establishment (CSE) documents, along with summary, publication, and original source information. CSE is Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency and has operated since the Second World War.

Documents were often produced by CSE’s closest partners which, collectively, form the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network. This network includes the CSE, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

All of the documents are available for download from this website. Though I am hosting the documents they were all first published by another party. The new documents and their summaries are listed below. The full list of documents and their summary information is available on the Canadian SIGINT Summaries page.

Hackers are Humans too: Cyber leads to Cl leads

Summary: This slide set showcases one method that CSE uses to expose the management structure and operators behind Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) activities, namely using passive infrastructure tasking and contact chaining. By monitoring infrastructure that was exposed through malware or content delivery for anomalous network sessions the CSE was subsequently able to trace MAKERSMARK (i.e. Russian) operations.

While MAKERSMARK’s less attributed systems can make it challenging to effectively trace to operators, these were poorly used and the operators exposed information associated with their’ personal lives. Furthermore, the development organization responsible for MAKERSMARK less attributed systems was infected by crimewave and CSE (or other friendly intelligence agencies) were consequently able to collect information which was being exfiltrated to criminal organizations.

The slide deck concludes with the warning the it is important to follow counter intelligence leads, quickly, because opportunities don’t last forever. Moreover, there was a warning that as a CNE program matures, such as that run by MAKERSMARK, the operational security associated with the program will similarly mature.

As part of my ongoing research into the Edward Snowden documents, I have found and added an additional two documents to the Canadian SIGINT Summaries. The Summaries include downloadable copies of leaked Communications Security Establishment (CSE) documents, along with summary, publication, and original source information. CSE is Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency and has operated since the Second World War.

Documents were often produced by CSE’s closest partners which, collectively, form the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network. This network includes the CSE, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

All of the documents are available for download from this website. Though I am hosting the documents they were all first published by another party. The new documents and their summaries are listed below. The full list of documents and their summary information is available on the Canadian SIGINT Summaries page.

These documents came to light as I examined the activities that took place between the NSA and New Zealand signals intelligence agencies. The first, “NSA Intelligence Relationship with New Zealand” notes that Canada is a member of the SIGINT Seniors Pacific group as well as SIGINT Seniors Europe. The second, “SIGINT Development Forum (SDF) Minutes”, notes how CSE and GCSB define shaping as “industry engagement and collection bending” as well as CSEC had considered audit analysts’ accounts similar to the NSA, though the prospect of such auditing had rearisen as a discussion point.

NSA Intelligence Relationship with New Zealand

Summary: This document summarizes the status of the NSA’s relationship with New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). The GCSB has been forced to expend more of its resources on compliance auditing following recommendations after it exceeded its authority in assisting domestic law enforcement, but continues to be focused on government and five eyes priorities and encouraged to pursue technical interoperability with NSA and other FVEY nations.

The NSA provides GCSB with “raw traffic, processing, and reporting on targets of mutual interest, in addition to technical advice and equipment loans.” The GCSB primarily provides the NSA with access to communications which would otherwise remain inaccessible. These communications include: China, Japanese/North Korean/Vietnamese/South American diplomatic communications, South Pacific Island nations, Pakistan, India, Iran, and Antartica, as well as French police and nuclear testing activities in New Caledonia.

Of note, GCSB is a member of SIGINT Seniors Pacific (SSPAC) (includes Australia, Canada, France, India, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, and United States) as well as SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR) (includes Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States).

SIGINT Development Forum (SDF) Minutes

Summary: This document summarizes the state of signals development amongst the Five Eyes (FVEY). It first outline the core imperatives for the group, including: ensuring that the top technologies are being identified for use and linked with the capability they bring; that NSA shaping (targeting routers) improves (while noting that for CSE and GCSB shaping involves “industry engagement and collection bending”); improving on pattern of life collection and analysis; improving on IP address geolocation that covers Internet, radio frequency, and GSM realms; analyzing how convergence of communications systems and technologies impacts SIGINT operations.

Privacy issues were seen as being on the groups’ radar, on the basis that the “Oversight & Compliance team at NSA was under-resourced and overburdened.” Neither GCSB or DSD were able to sponsor or audit analysts’ accounts similar to the NSA, and CSEC indicated it had considered funding audit billets; while dismissed at the time, the prospect has re-arisen. At the time the non-NSA FVEYs were considering how to implement ‘super-user’ accounts, where specific staff will run queries for counterparts who are not directly authorized to run queries on selective databases.

GCSB, in particular, was developing its first network analyst team in October 2009 and was meant to prove the utility of network analysis so as to get additional staff for later supporting STATEROOM and Computer Network Exploitation tasks. Further, GCSB was to continue its work in the South Pacific region, as well as expanding cable access efforts and capabilities during a 1 month push. There was also a problem where 20% of GCSB’s analytic workforce lacked access to DSD’s XKEYSCORE, which was a problem given that GCSB provided NSA with raw data. The reason for needing external tools to access data is GCSB staff are prohibited from accessing New Zealand data.

I have a paper on telecommunications transparency reports which has been accepted for publication in Business and Society for later this year.

Centrally, the paper finds that companies will not necessarily produce easily comparable reports in relatively calm political waters and that, even should reports become comparable, they may conceal as much as they reveal. Using a model for evaluating transparency reporting used by Fung, Graham, and Weil in their 2007 book, Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promises of Transparency, I find that the reports issued by telecommunications companies are somewhat effective because they have led to changes in corporate behaviour and stakeholder interest, but have have been largely ineffective in prodding governments to behave more accountably. Moreover, reports issued by Canadian companies routinely omit how companies themselves are involved in facilitating government surveillance efforts when not legally required to do so. In effect, transparency reporting — even if comparable across industry partners — risks treating the symptom — the secrecy of surveillance — without getting to the cause — how surveillance is facilitated by firms themselves.

Last year a report that I wrote for the Centre for Law and Democracy was published online. The report, “Transparency in Surveillance: Role of various intermediaries in facilitating state surveillance transparency,” discusses how governments have expanded their surveillance capabilities in an effort to enhance law enforcement, foreign intelligence, and cybersecurity powers and the implications of such expansions. After some of these powers are outlined and the impact on communicating parties clarified, I explore how the voluntary activities undertaken by communications intermediaries can also facilitate government surveillance activities. However, while private companies can facilitate government surveillance they can also facilitate transparency surrounding the surveillance by proactively working to inform their users about government activities. The report concluded by discussing the broader implications of contemporary state surveillance practices, with a focus on the chilling effects that these practices have on social discourse writ large.

Parsons, Christopher. (2015). “Stuck on the Agenda: Drawing lessons from the stagnation of ‘lawful access’ legislation in Canada,” Michael Geist (ed.), Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era (Ottawa University Press).

Parsons, Christopher. (2015). “Beyond the ATIP: New methods for interrogating state surveillance,” in Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby (Eds.), Access to Information and Social Justice (Arbeiter Ring Publishing).

Bennett, Colin, and Parsons, Christopher. (2013). “Privacy and Surveillance: The Multi-Disciplinary Literature on the Capture, Use, and Disclosure of Personal information in Cyberspace” in W. Dutton (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies.

McPhail, Brenda; Parsons, Christopher; Ferenbok, Joseph; Smith, Karen; and Clement, Andrew. (2013). “Identifying Canadians at the Border: ePassports and the 9/11 legacy,” in Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27(3).

Parsons, Christopher; Savirimuthu, Joseph; Wipond, Rob; McArthur, Kevin. (2012). “ANPR: Code and Rhetorics of Compliance,” in European Journal of Law and Technology 3(3).